Final Fantasy XII is a prime example of why I have a policy to give every game at least a second chance. I had originally given this game a 6.9/10, citing it as my least favorite game in the entire franchise. Now, a little older, wiser, and with more Final Fantasy games under my belt, I’ve gained a true appreciation for how truly magnificent of a title this is.

• Ivalice, as presented in Final Fantasy XII, is, in my opinion, the best-realized world in the entire series thus far. The way each city, town, village, field, forest, river, and beach physically tie together feels completely tangible, standing on a foundation built from an impressive wealth of incredibly-written supplemental dialogue. The game is flooded with these nuggets of lore from the main story content and in every interactable NPC, breathing life into an already fascinating setting filled to the brim with detail, history, and people. For example, I think a particularly great and subtle way in which the game fleshes out the classism that you’ll find present in Ivalice is the way it treats the writing. Lowly characters like Vaan and Penelo speak like you and me, using slang and modern verbiage that anyone could understand. Ashe and Balthier, on the other hand, are of a higher stature in life and speak in a suitably refined, regal manner that tells you in just their cadence and word-choice that they are above our loveable orphan duo. Even the non-human characters, such as the Viera, speak in thick accents which demonstrates the separation, making them feel more alien. This audial segregation is formed and twisted in ways that play into the greater theme, of many, that the people are of one and must be there for each other regardless of their lineage or walk of life.
• Controversially, the main cast of characters is far more subdued than in previous games, some would argue to a fault. I prefer to look at it as if their stories are paragraphs on a page of the same chapter in the book of Ivalice, highlighted for our viewing pleasure. I found each character’s individual development and comradery very compelling and enjoyable, in spite of the amount of content required to fully grasp the goings-on and how their decisions live and die by the events surrounding them. I think the way the cast is presented plays a large part in how the story feels so grand, by putting the events and dynamics of the setting in the foreground and its characters in the background you get this sense that the world exists regardless of the cast’s decisions and involvement. This allows later moments in the game to feel all the more impactful when said decisions make huge waves and affect hundreds, even thousands of lives. One of my favorite characters in FFXII is Vayne, the primary antagonist. His introduction to the story is particularly interesting because it portrays him as the ruler that’s hip with the kids, so to speak. As a viewer, you very quickly get a taste of how powerful a leader Vayne is by turning a rioting crowd into a cheering one within a 2-minute speech. This isn’t just a big bad evil that’s powerful in his strength or magical capacity, but rather in his puppeteering of everyone around him.
• Final Fantasy XII is a political war-drama, akin to the likes of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It’s a slow boil that takes its time to craft a narrative that is both gritty and enchanting. The way the characters and events cook in the simmering pot of a war-torn Ivalice adds a familiar and mature intrigue that lurks beneath the world’s fantastical exterior. The story does fizzle out a tad by the third act, but it ends strong all the same, despite 40 or so hours of that content feeling like a never-ending fetch quest.

• I think Final Fantasy XII’s greatest evolution for the series is in its gameplay. I would even go so far as to say that I think there are other games in this franchise that could benefit from being made with the systems, mechanics, and overall gameplay of FFXII because it’s honestly that great.
• This game marks the first in the series to have real-time combat. There are time-based elements with a waiting bar between actions, but this is tied to the RPG progression underneath. A character with higher Speed can act quicker and therefore more frequently, and high-level magic takes longer to cast. A fight begins and ends based on vicinity and line of sight, allowing the player to avoid conflict or purposefully engage in it at their leisure. This is useful for both grinding at low levels and blazing through old areas at high ones. When combat is engaged, there is no transition to a separate battle screen and gameplay technically doesn’t change. You always have access to your abilities whether you’re in a fight or not, and you can move around the environment all the same. This overall approach to combat in Final Fantasy XII is immersive, engaging, and empowering all at once.
• Deepening the combat is FFXII’s own spin on a job system that was expanded on in its International release, which the Zodiac Age is based on. In this system, each character is given the choice of one of twelve jobs to choose from, which determines the abilities and equipment they may learn to use, as well as the stats they’ll be able to improve. The way these are unlocked is through the License Board, a character progression system that feels like a strict older brother to Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid. As your party defeats enemies, the active members receive experience points and everyone receives license points. These license points are used to progress through the License Board, which is physically laid out differently depending on each character’s chosen job. A monk might start off focusing on physical damage and light armor where a knight may immediately begin building up their health. A lot of this is up to the player– in fact, you can completely ignore the License Board if desired, though this isn’t recommended for a normal run through the game. Later, each character may choose a second job, allowing the player to fill the gaps left over from the first set of jobs that were chosen, and even providing an opportunity to balance a character’s developed weaknesses through the second job’s inherent strengths. This change has both benefited the core game as well as undermined some of its original charm. While each character now feels like a distinct member of the party with dedicated roles and responsibilities, there’s also less of an incentive to explore the License Board by midway because of the way it is presented in Zodiac Age. This is an unfortunate moment where player convenience has backfired on the core experience of a system’s original design that left me feeling like I no longer needed to advance the Board by the time my characters reached level 30.
• I must concede that the Espers are a missed opportunity. The way FFXII handles Espers in their entirety is a bit of a head-scratcher, in that it’s almost as if the game is embarrassed to have them at all. In gameplay, the Espers are unlocked through specific story moments. They are then added as a tile in each character’s License Board, therefore requiring license points to be available for use for a single character. Summoning an Esper replaces your entire party aside from the summoner, which I found is often less efficient or viable late game because my characters were often better equipped and leveled than the Esper, nullifying their usefulness.
• The nature of handling multiple characters in real-time combat necessitates handing off control of your two other party members to the game’s AI. With Gambits, the player is put in control of that very AI, presented as a list of if/then statements. For the less programmatically-inclined, if/then statements are blocks of code that say, “If this statement is true, then do this” and can be strung together infinitely to handle a variety of situations. In Final Fantasy XII, this means you can have a single Gambit say, “If a party member’s health is below 50%, cast Cure on them.” Through License Board progression and the purchasing of various conditions and abilities, you can sculpt a battle plan for each character to follow in every fight, which takes away any fear that one might not do quite what you want. I cannot express how innovative and powerful this system is, because it not only serves to make the now real-time battles manageable by essentially providing pre-planned input for each character, but it does so in a way that is rewarding and fun to experiment with.
• Sidequests are handled in such a unique way in Final Fantasy XII. They’re often massive in scope, varied in content, strangely easy to miss, and almost always impossible to track. One example of a rather basic sidequest is that of a Viera in Rabanastre. You’ll find her sitting away from the large crowds of the Bazaar, contemplating what she wants to do with her life after her sister left their village. As you progress through the game and visit her, you’ll be able to get more insight into her thoughts and even influence certain decisions she’ll make until she eventually leaves the spot to pursue a new goal. None of this is telegraphed with a quest marker, and you will not find a way to track it in any menu. She’s simply a citizen of Rabanastre you can interact with if you notice her and desire to with a little arc of her own. A more intricate and robust sidequest most people are familiar with is the Hunts, which is made available directly in the main story and is trackable in the Clan Primer menu. These task the player with hunting monsters located all throughout Ivalice for rewards. It’s a simple premise that’s easy to get wrapped up in, and like with most everything else in the game you’ll find a great deal of depth.
• I was originally violently opposed to the level design in Final Fantasy XII because I believed that it relied far too heavily on labyrinthine layouts designed to disorient, confuse, and otherwise pad an experience as a substitute for meaningful content and gameplay. Upon deeper reflection and analysis, I think these moments are fewer than it had seemed and now realize that the game provides a hearty number of tools to the player to help keep them informed of where they are in a location, and not get lost. These labyrinths exist, don’t misunderstand, but they are often simple enough to understand and the gameplay is often fun enough a distraction that getting a little lost won’t feel like much a hindrance. There are a few areas of the game that I actually loved to explore and even just look at because the design was so sharp. Wide-open areas such as fields stitch together to fill the grander puzzle of Ivalice in such a way that makes the game feel like a real, massive adventure just in the world alone. The more dungeon-esque environments may seem akin to Final Fantasy XIII’s hallways at first, but you’ll find that the nature of their looping into themselves and even hiding secret shortcuts to either new or old areas realizes these places in a way that feels more than a linear series of corridors, and are filled with monsters, homes, wildlife, and most importantly: history.
• The Zodiac Age is a particularly well-polished experience. Controls are ridiculously smooth and considerate of the modern player by providing ample settings to tweak, including the ability to invert camera controls. To ease late-game grinding or lessen the slow burn of beginning a new game, you can fast forward the game in-engine with the press of a button, the speed of which is also adjustable. Cutscenes are skippable and always pausable. I never ran into a bug in my 100+ hours of either run through the game.

• Final Fantasy XII is a very pretty game, regardless of the hardware you play it on. I’ve now played through the entire game on a high-end PC and a Nintendo Switch, and it was gorgeous on both devices. Clarity is a non-issue, models are smooth and intricate, and the world actually astounds me with the level of detail sometimes.
• Animations receive far more care and attention than in previous installments, even bringing to the table differing fighting animations depending on the character, their weapon, their job, and certain abilities within said job. This is such an amazing set of details that further rewards the player’s decisions and experimentation.
• I will always adore Tetsuya Nomura’s style found in most later Final Fantasy games and in the Kingdom Hearts series, but I’ve found a new love for Akihiko Yoshida’s work in Final Fantasy XII, XIV, and Tactics. Where Nomura oozes cool and style, Yoshida’s art is simply beautiful. The characters and landscapes are dainty and serene, and simply an immense pleasure to experience. Seeing his art style realized in FFXII’s remastered engine is glorious, and I would love to see Yoshida get the chance to work on another mainline title.

• The sound design is pretty great here and does a good job of keeping the player informed of their surroundings. This is especially important in Final Fantasy XII with its fully 3D environments and real-time combat. There are dedicated sounds for each enemy, when loot is dropped, when experience or license points are gained, and even the different types of weapons or magic sound different from one another. Purely through audio, you’ll know when an enemy was shot with a crossbow bolt or impaled with a polearm.
• The voice-work behind Final Fantasy XII is truly masterful in both its direction and delivery. At first, it comes off a little tinny, as if the lines were recorded through a toaster or that the audio was compressed perhaps a little too much, but your ears adjust to this quickly and you probably won’t notice it at all within an hour or so.
• On a technical level, the music in FFXII is fantastic; however, the typical Final Fantasy fan will most likely find the soundtrack lacking in its memorability. This is because rather than relying on melodies and leitmotif to sew emotions together with characters or events, the score mostly serves to provide ambiance. It does well to set the appropriate tone, with boisterous strings in the heat of boss fight or relaxed winds when strolling through an ancient forest, but inversely does very little to stand out against other orchestral scores found in Hollywood films or indeed other games. I don’t think this is a flaw in the soundtrack itself. Rather, I believe it suffers a shared hurdle of any orchestral score that few composers have risen above for me.

• I think that Final Fantasy XII has the best UI of the series by a country mile. The HUD is clean, unobtrusive, and informative. Menus are much the same while also being snappy and offer some customization. The amount of information and control afforded by FFXII’s UI makes its excellent execution all the more important and impressive to the experience. I think my chief complaint with it is the inability to disable the minimap, which could have further encouraged natural exploration of this game’s outstanding setting.

• I adore that when our party finally confronts Vayne at the end, his response is a passive-aggressive introduction before he hisses, “Who are you?” It didn’t even strike me until that moment that in my entire 70 hours, Vaan and company had never interacted with the main villain of the game. Sure, Vayne was present during the scuffle in the sewers of Rabanastre near the beginning of the journey, but this was all but a 30-second exchange that required very little of Vayne’s attention. Otherwise, the whole time they’ve been pestering Vayne from afar– under the watchful eye of his Judges and Cid, granted, but he was otherwise so occupied with his own plans for the greater political scenario that our characters might as well have not existed at all from his perspective. For someone that flies the banner of ‘mankind’ while spitting in the face of the very gods he eventually becomes one with, it’s almost hypocritical how little an impact the party leaves on Vayne.
• Vayne the Undying makes for a fun and epic final boss. His visual design is pretty spectacular, reminding me of a steampunk Bahamut. He wasn’t the most difficult fight, even solely within the main story content, but I found his balance to be just about right so as to not be too difficult or too easy.
• The ending sequence is truly incredible. It demonstrates how each character has grown, the end of a terrible war, and the establishment of the dawn of a new age for Ivalice. In particular, I love the way Balthier and Fran leave the Strahl in Vaan’s hands with the intention of keeping the Bahamut from crashing into Rabanstre, full-knowing it may very well be their end. The realization of this hits quite hard, and you may not even realize how hard until in the final cutscene it is revealed that not only have Balthier and Fran survived, but they’ve stolen the Strahl back from Vaan and returned Ashe’s ring. Moments like this make me raise an eyebrow at the assertion that the characters of Final Fantasy XII are weak because if that were indeed the case I’d feel no impact from these scenes.

After heavy consideration and assessment, Final Fantasy XII has risen far above its previous standing in my mind. Where it used to be my lowest-rated in the series, it now stands with a score higher than some of my favorites. This is a true redemption story that I did not expect to see, and I’m so thrilled at its achievement.

More than I think any other game in the franchise, Final Fantasy XII presents a sense of scale and adventure that feels impenetrably grand. Its gameplay innovations bring new life to an old formula, and the presentation of its story and characters are unlike anything seen in previous entries in spite of the actual content being grounded in relative reality. I gave this game a second chance, and now I’m in love with it.